


i see a darkness

by merengue



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: M/M, also idriss knows about eliott's mi, friends since middle school, once again fanfictioning myself out of being disappointed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-26 14:54:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19008070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merengue/pseuds/merengue
Summary: a different take on what the Eliott-Idriss backstory could've been, or, alternatively,4x09: Imane and Idriss talk.





	i see a darkness

**Author's Note:**

> title: i see a darkness - rosalía

The door opens quietly, without noise. Imane steps inside and the light from the living room spills on the landing, yellow tiger stripes.

She feels him before she actually sees him, brain wired after a life of sharing the same space for so long. Cross-legged, deep in thought, his head resting along the edge of the sofa. Like that, Idriss looks almost carved in stone.

She makes herself breathe in deep, get ready for whatever comes, getting closer until her knees almost hit his shoulders.

“I’m sorry”.

Idriss opens his eyes suddenly, staring right at her. He’s wearing his pajamas, must have been spent the day at home. His face is unredeable, though. Idriss has always been so good at this, hiding his feelings.

It’s usually a good thing, the way they can both control their tempers, tame their thoughts. Right now is bothering her to the point of squirming.

“Sorry about what?”, he offers.

“About the Ingrid thing, telling our parents. It was a low blow. You didn’t deserve that”.

“No, I didn’t”, he admits, but he’s smiling so Imane allows herself to hope, excitement beating its wings. “But I understand. Why you did it, I mean”.

Imane lets her body collapse slowly, sitting next to him, knees to her chest, feeling every bump of the sofa against her spine.

“So, you get to be happily ever after with Ingrid now, huh”, she tries laughing it off, a peace offering. Ingrid being a racist bitch can wait now. “Just don’t bring her to family meetings, mom and dad probably don't want to witness any more cat fights”.

“Wow, all this niceness", and Imane's heart warms at the sight of him playing along. "Where’s my baby sister?”

“She’s been substituted by a kinder double, but just for Ramadan. Don’t worry, she’s coming back in full force when it’s all done”, she smirks, shaking her head, waiting for him to bite back.

The silence seems to take a life of its own after a while, though, Idriss shaking his head softly, staring at the ground.

“I’m not with her anymore”.

“You’re not?”, she looks at him suddenly, searching his face, but Idriss only tilts his head as an answer, fingers pulling at a thread of his sweatpants.

“Nah. It was casual. And bringing her home was a bit bratty, I’ll admit”.

“Yeah, it was”, she throws back, solemnly, relieved, before Idriss hits her with a pillow and then both their laughters spill like light, flooding the whole room. He offers her his open hand, and following with the hand shake they’ve been perfecting since they were children feels like the most organic thing in the world. 

It’s nice, feeling like some things are shifting slowly back into place again. Everything is crooked, empty, but getting this back —getting her brother back, it helps. The hole in her chest stitches itself a little.

There’s so many things she wants to ask, so many days they’ve missed. So many doubts clouding her head after her conversation with Lucas, fleeting thoughts like birds, flying off all at the same time, leaving her empty-handed.

“Can I ask you something?”, she starts, because at least that's a beginning of sorts.

Idriss gets more comfortable, straightens his legs.

“Yeah, go ahead”.

“I saw you talking with Lucas, that night, at Daphné’s birthday”, she starts, carefully. “Did you say something weird to him, unintentionally?”

Idriss’ eyebrows are pinched, deep in thought. “No, why?”

“Lucas asked about you, I don’t know exactly why, the other day. And Eliott, well”, she begins, not sure she wants to follow through anymore.

“Well?”

“He… He told Lucas you might be homophobic”.

Imane studies his reaction, every little gesture, tick in his face, knowing it by heart. There’s a slight frown, there and gone, but apart from that Idriss’ face doesn’t betray him, stoic.

“He did? Say that?”

“That’s what Lucas told me, last time we studied together. At least that’s what he thought Eliott had tried to say”, she starts, knowing she’s rambling. “I know you didn’t end on good terms exactly after that fight you had, but…”

The silence is suffocating. Idriss looks conflicted, Imane notes, almost on the verge of an emotion, just teetering on the edge. He expects Idriss to get angry, to frown in  _that_ way Imane knows too well, eyes shutting off completely.

He doesn’t expect him to smile. And god, it’s sad. Imane feels something lurch in the pit of her stomach, icy cold.

“Have I ever told you how we met, Eliott and I?”, Imane shakes her head, urging Idriss to go on. “We were eleven, at the time. Sof and I were playing football and Eliott was drawing in his sketchbook, and we hit him hard in the face, by mistake. We took him to the infirmary and we saw by chance his drawing of us playing, and it was so awesome. We got talking. And as they say, well, it took off from there”.

Imane smiles at the memories, warm, tinged in orange.

“We’d always been friends, you know? Real friends. Along with Sofiane. The best, for the longest time”.

“I know. I remember", and it's true. "It’s weird, not having him here every other iftar on Friday now, eating all the knafeh mom makes”.

The memory is bittersweet and Imane swallows it, listening to Idriss while he laughs.

“God, he scarfed the thing down, always stealing the last piece. What a heathen”, he pauses softly, seems to get lost in some memory far, far away. 

When he speaks again, his voice has changed completely, and Imane straightens herself just at the way it sounds.

“How much do you know, Imane? About what happened? About Eliott?”

“I know you fought”, she begins, rummaging through her memories, trying to fit the puzzle into place. “Also, that… That he…”

For a moment she doubts, a split second of dread, wanting to protect Eliott's rights on who gets to know.

“You can say it, Imane. Eliott and I, we didn’t have secrets”.

There’s a lot of things Imane thinks, all flashing in front of her eyes.

“That he’s not well”, she ends up saying, almost a whisper, not sure when it would be considered trespassing, talking about things that don’t belong to her. She learnt this from the girls, after all. It's not hers to talk about.

“He’s not unwell”, Idriss looks up at the ceiling, smiles softly, tone slightly scolding. “He’s just bipolar, you know. Got diagnosed at 15, after… Well, after a really bad episode. Lucille and I spent the two following days with him in his house, skipped class just to stay with him”.

Imane tries to remember, the absence, the empty days, but comes up blank. Everything is smooth, all soft edges in her head. It makes her feel angry, for a reason, knowing it was all there and she never noticed anything at all.

“I don’t remember any of that”, she admits, and Idriss smiles knowingly, almost like he expected as much. Like there’s a veil of memories in front of his eyes only he gets to see.

“I tried to make sure no one noticed, at the time. It was important for him, to keep it quiet. So we both did our best, Lucille and I”.

Imane tries to picture it, so many years ago. Idriss skipping class, piling undone homework, softly seating on top of unwashed sheets, soft light peeking though.

“Lucille?”, she mulls over the name, instead.

She knows only glimpses, all through Manon, through Emma, broken shards of glass. Never the full picture. It’s weird, trying to guess, to make it all fit.

“Eliott's ex. She was nice, you know. She went through a lot, too, trying to navigate the whole thing. It was hard, for a long time. Eliott shut us out completely. We didn’t know what to do”.

“I… I didn’t even know”.

It’s hard, imagining Eliott like that. Soft, warm Eliott, lanky limbs, every atom made of sunlight. There’s some pieces shifting into place quietly, slowly shuffling in her head, but the fog is still set in place, veiling the past.

“Sofiane didn’t know, too, for a while. It took months. Eliott didn’t… Well, it’s not my story to tell, really. But it was— it was hard”, he sighs, and it’s long and dragged out, like he’s a million miles away from the room. “Opening up to people is always hard”.

Imane looks up and Idriss is looking at her in this way, suddenly, eyes open and earnest, like he wants her to understand something she can’t even begin to start guessing at. But she wants to, desperately.

She wants to guess. To learn whatever it is that’s clouding Idriss’ eyes.

“It got harder when he failed his bac and Sofiane left for Australia, last year, all at the same time”, Idriss continues, soft words. “An episode hit hard, I tried helping, things with Lucille were– Tough, at the time. We spent a lot of time together, last Summer, because of it”.

“ _That_ I remember”, she comments, sifting through memories of long, hot days, that trip to the beach Eliott tagged along in, the photos she knows Idriss keeps in some box in his room, tucked and hidden and safe from the passing of time. 

“It was good. Best Summer of my life, I think. It was weird adjusting, suddenly just the two of us, without Sofiane. We had to find our footing again, but it was good. So good”, Idriss pauses, laughing bitterly. “Too good, really”.

He’s screaming with his eyes, Imane can see it, but it’s  _hard_ to guess when so much is drifting through the air, dissolving and rearraging, changing the past she was always so sure of having a grasp of.

“I think I don’t–”

“We had a thing, Imane”.

There was a pool, once, when she was eight and they went to the community complex for the first time. Shimmering blue, clear as glass. Imane remembers getting in without her armbands by mistake and then next thing she was drowning, lungs on the verge of bursting, fire licking from inside.

Imane tries to breathe now and it feels like she’s eight again, on the deep end of that same pool, trying to breach the surface.

“Sofiane wasn’t there, Lucille went abroad. We got close. Closer, even”, Idriss isn’t looking at her while he speaks, eyes fixated on a seemingly random spot of the wall. “I think neither of us knew, at first. He started hanging out more, I stayed at his place, we shared stuff we wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been just the two of us for such a long time”.

Imane tries to picture it, long nights, soft conversations, fill the gaps her memory had made up for with a story that now is shifting in front of her. 

“He started creating, feverishly, after the first couple of months and the bac thing. He had this thing going on, this storyboard— I helped him create a video for fundrising, even, so he could go on with it. He was so invested in the story, the characters, his plans. His happiness was infectious, really”, Idriss sighs, and that at least Imane can see it: Eliott’s eyes crinkling, smile wide and open. It would be enough to melt anyone’s heart. “He was so excited for the first time after the whole high school thing, too, I didn’t think twice. We spent the whole Summer planning. The first time we flirted openly, it didn’t even feel new. It felt like it had been happening for the longest time”.

Imane feels floored, the rug no longer rubbing against the palm of her hands, smell, sight blocked. Eliott had been home so many times, sharing dinners, lunches, days in the backyard drawing while the rest of them played —a kind of permanent fixture in the background of her life, and suddenly he feels so new. So different. The world tilts on its axis and Imane tries to hold onto it as tightly as she can.

“And I let it happen because if felt good, you know?", he continues, faster now. "We even kissed, a couple times, mostly drunk off our asses in the middle of the night, but I didn’t think twice about it. Couldn’t. We were friends. Then an episode happened, he broke up with Lucille, told me—”, Idriss closes his eyes, bites his own lip. “Told me he wanted to try seriously, and I didn’t even know how I felt, what I felt, what anyone would think—What  _I_ would think of myself. So I told him I just couldn’t”, his voice breaks softly, and it’s like everything around them shatters with it.

“ _Idriss_ ”.

Her arms are tingling, the need to just get closer and hug him too urgent, to crush his ribs and his lungs until there’s no room for fear or doubt again.

“I said some nasty shit, you know, to get him off my back”, he continues, recomposing himself. “Tried pushing him away. I guess it was too much, with Sofiane gone, his state, Lucille angry at him. He came crashing down, changed schools, deleted all his media. I didn’t dare speak to him after that, after everything”, there’s this quietness now, lulling the room, as thick as lead. “I lied to Sofiane and the other guys about the whole thing, to you, after. At Daphné’s, that was the first I’ve seem him since. With that boy”.

“Lucas”.

“Lucas”, he agrees, softly.

Idriss touches his necklace softly, deep blue shining in the low-lit room. “Eliott gave this to me, days before the whole disaster. It’s weird now, even poetic. Knowing it ended up being the exact colour of his boyfriend’s eyes”.

Imane is swimming in thoughts. His brother, Eliott, Sofiane, Lucas— it all makes the most and the least of senses, at the same time, flocking and disbanding until everything is splashes, like sunrise jut before the sun finally breaks through.

“And Ingrid?”, she asks, because there’s so many questions now, that feels like an easy one to start with.

“I like girls, too”, Idriss shrugs. “Always have. And she was there, cute, so I thought, might as well. It took my mind off things at the time”.

She can’t help it. It’s flooding her, about to burst.

“ _God_ , Idriss, if Eliott knew all this—”

“It doesn’t matter anymore, Imane”, he shuts her down quick and wift, almost no room to fight back. “Those feelings are in the past, they truly are. And he’s happy now, really happy. I’m not about to meddle, not after all the shit I did to him”.

There’s something about it, though, the tone. The longing. Imane knows what it is to miss a real friend —like missing a limb, spectral and painful. 

“He’s out there thinking you’re homophobic, for god’s sake, Idriss. Or worse, that you hate him, or—”.

“ _Imane”_.

She stops dead in her tracks, scolded. “Sorry”.

Idriss starts standing up, using the sofa as leverage, and Imane almost wants to scream.  _Don’t go._ There’s just so much in her head.

“I just wanted to tell you so you know, the story. I didn’t feel like lying to you anymore, not after— I’m just tired, of having to lie. And I meant it, that time”.

“What?”, she asks, suddenly alert.

“You have to live your life for yourself. Not for anybody else, not for anyone’s expectations of what you have to do. Just— be happy”. 

She can remember it, the table, the cold wind, the taste of tea in the back of her tongue. Idriss’ past words take on a new meaning now, and Imane feels it so deeply she almost wants to cry.

“You miss him, don’t you?”

They sound final, his words.

“Every single day”.

Her body stands up before she can even start thinking about it, and they hug so tightly that if Imane weren’t used to it, she thinks the sheer strength of it would break her in half.

“I love you, you know? I love you a thousand. A million. Nothing could change that, ever. And you can talk to me always, okay?”, she whispers, words muffled against his shoulder. “Any time. Any day”.

Idriss sighs softly, kisses her head. 

"And you can talk to me about Sofiane whenever you want, too”.

The blush creeps on her cheeks so hard and fast, it feels like a rush to the head. “There’s nothing to talk about, you idiot”.

“Yeah, except that you’re both dumb and also meant for each other”, he laughs, pulling away only enough to look her in the eye, not even trying to mask the redness of them. “I mean it. Don’t drive yourself away from happiness, baby sister. Religion is important, but there’s always a way, and your life takes first seat", a pause, almost imperceptible. "I know a thing or two about that”.

“You too”, she says, desperately. “You have to be happy too”.

“Right here and now I am”, he whispers warmly, hugs her again tightly and Imane feels the tears prickling on her eyes, burning wet. 

“You’ll talk to him, someday? And explain? Promise?”, she asks, because she can’t not. They deserve that. They deserve this, being friends again —remembers Eliott’s face when he studied that picture in her phone, the longing that hid there, too.

“Promise”.

When she lets go, the air feels colder but her heart lighter, in a way, like a layer of lead has been peeled from it.

Idriss rubs his hands, sniffles quietly, trying to pass it off as sneezing. “I should go and do some things Sofiane asked me for the club, now—”

“Of course”, she says quickly, coughing, knowing full well when to back off. “I need to get some homework done, too”.

The way her brother smiles back before she turns around melts her to the bone, makes her want to turn back and hug him and never let go again. 

She’s almost at the end of the corridor, picking up her bag, when she hears it.

“Imane?”

“Yeah?”

She turns around slowly, not knowing what to make of Idriss’ face.

“The boy he’s with, Lucas— Does he know, about Eliott? Is he good?”

It’s such a strange question, knowing what she knows, and suddenly memories flash in front of her eyes like blurry landscapes, like staring at them from a train. Lucas hiding, the first tentative steps: the drawing, the tears, the mural, the smiles. Soft Lucas, bright eyes, red heart, almost too big for his own chest. The way they orbit each other now, always ready to catch the other if they fall, if they break, like they were meant to be each other’s missing puzzle piece.

“Both things”, she answers in the end, because she’s not sure about many things in life, but she’s sure about this. “He knows. And… yes. I haven’t seen two people protect each other that much. Not like they do".

Idriss doesn’t speak, but he smiles softly and nods, so Imane guesses it’s enough.

She turns around again, climbing the stairs slowly, thinking of water and labyrinths and love, of how much pain it causes sometimes, and the way in which sometimes getting through the hurt is the only way to find your place in the world.


End file.
